Review: Aloha Vietnam by Elizabeth Nguyen

Readers interested in mental health issues and in the lives of families will appreciate this novel by Elizabeth Nguyen. Like her main character Anh, Nguyen is the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who raised her in Hawaii. She is also a psychiatrist with an interest in the intersections of mental health, spirituality, and nature. 

In her novel, Anh is 17 when she has her first manic episode. She has a breakdown in one of her classes and has to stay for a time in a mental hospital. She’s fortunate to have a caring doctor but soon becomes overwhelmed by her condition, exacerbated by her embarrassment with her classmates, her worry about being a burden on her family, and her discomfort with taking daily medication. On top of that, she’s at an age where she needs to be thinking about her grades, college, and career.  Anh’s mother, Xuan, cares deeply but doesn’t know how to help and blames herself. She wants Anh to be successful but success, in her mind, looks more like a medical degree. She doesn’t understand the things that actually make Anh feel better, like art and the ocean.

Throughout this book, Anh felt very real to me. Nguyen effectively takes readers inside her mind, even as she’s experiencing traumatic episodes. A warning, this book can be hard to read at times.

It’s not the most artfully written novel – it’s well written but a bit clunky at times. It’s very direct, which I think is why it felt like a memoir rather than fiction. But I appreciated that it was heartfelt and I learned quite a bit about bipolar disorder.

I could very much relate to Anh’s challenges in this book, even though I don’t have her condition nor am I of Vietnamese descent. There are themes in this book that are universal, such as Anh’s difficulty in sharing her needs with her family and friends, and their difficulty in being able to relate to understanding what she’s going through. I could relate to Anh’s struggle to make good choices about her life after high school, and her feelings of loneliness in college, of wanting to fit in with others but still be true to herself. I could also relate to some of her experiences as the daughter of immigrants.

I loved the settings of Oahu and California – and the beautiful cover. I love reading books about people who live in Hawaii, since I’ve only been a tourist there but it’s one of my very favorite places. I was particularly interested in the characters’ experience as Vietnamese-Americans living in Hawaii and then Anh’s experience of going to California, where there is a much smaller Vietnamese community. 

This was a thoughtful book that was written very realistically due to the author’s expertise in the subject of mental illness and her own experiences as a Vietnamese-American. I recommend it.

Note: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Book Publicity Services to read for Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage month and Mental Health Awareness month (both in May, though I wasn’t able to review it in time). This book was published December 14, 2022 by The Unbound Press.